Five-minute study · Day 266 · Mark 7
Mark 7:34
A word worth stopping on: ephphatha ἐφφαθά ephphatha
Most of what Jesus said, we have in translation. He spoke Aramaic. The Gospels were written in Greek. Every sentence is already one language away from his mouth. But a handful of times, the Gospel writers preserved the actual Aramaic word. Mark 7:34 is one of those moments. 'And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.' Mark wrote for a Roman audience that did not speak Aramaic, so he translated the word immediately. He could have just given the Greek. He chose to preserve the sound. You are reading a word that came directly from Jesus' vocal cords. It is a rare window into his mother tongue.
Word study: ephphatha
- Aramaic/Greek
- ἐφφαθά
- Pronounced
- ephphatha
- Strong's
- G2188
- Definition
- Be opened. An Aramaic imperative (ethpathach) transliterated into Greek characters. The word is a command directed at the deaf and mute man's ears and tongue.
Ephphatha appears once in the New Testament: Mark 7:34. BDAG identifies it as an Aramaic word (ethpathach, from the root pathach, to open) transliterated into Greek. The form is an ethpael imperative: be opened. The passive voice is significant. Jesus does not say 'I open you.' He says 'be opened,' as if commanding the ears and tongue to respond to an authority they recognize.
Taylor's commentary on Mark identifies the ephphatha as one of several Aramaic words preserved in the Gospel: talitha koumi (5:41, 'little girl, arise'), korban (7:11, 'an offering'), abba (14:36, 'father'), eloi eloi lama sabachthani (15:34, 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me'). Each preservation is a deliberate editorial choice. Mark wrote in Greek for a primarily Gentile audience (he explains Jewish customs, translates Aramaic terms, uses Latin loanwords). He did not need to preserve the Aramaic. He chose to because the original words carried something the translation could not fully convey.
Taylor suggests that the Aramaic words in Mark derive from eyewitness memory. The tradition connecting Mark to Peter (Papias, as preserved in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.15) holds that Mark was Peter's interpreter and wrote down what Peter remembered. If Peter was present at this healing, the Aramaic word would have been preserved in Peter's memory exactly as Jesus spoke it. The sound of the word was part of the story. Translation captures meaning. Transliteration captures sound. Mark preserved both.
The context of the healing is detailed. Mark 7:31-37 describes a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment (mogilalon, speaking with difficulty). Jesus took him aside privately, put his fingers in the man's ears, spat and touched the man's tongue, looked up to heaven, sighed (stenazo, to groan, to sigh deeply), and said ephphatha. The physical actions preceding the word are unusual. Jesus did not always use physical gestures in healing. The fingers in the ears and the touch on the tongue seem calibrated to the man's condition: communicating through touch what could not be communicated through speech, since the man was deaf. The sigh (stenazo) before speaking suggests emotional weight, the cost of confronting what disease and suffering have done to a human body.
The word ephphatha is a command to the physical body. It addresses the ears and tongue as if they have the capacity to obey. 'Be opened' treats the deafness as a door that has been shut and can be commanded open. Mark reports the result: 'straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain' (7:35). The word did what it said.
Historical context · Jesus' ministry approximately AD 27-30; Mark's Gospel written approximately AD 65-70; Aramaic as the common language of Palestine from the Persian period (539 BC) onward; Greek as the lingua franca of the eastern Roman Empire
The Aramaic Words of Jesus in a Greek Gospel
Aramaic was the everyday language of Palestine during the first century AD. It had replaced Hebrew as the common spoken language during the Persian period (539-332 BC), when Aramaic served as the administrative language of the Persian Empire from Egypt to India. By Jesus' time, Hebrew was primarily a language of liturgy and scholarship (the Torah was read in Hebrew in synagogues, with Aramaic translations called targumim provided for the congregation). Jesus spoke Aramaic as his primary language. He likely also knew Hebrew (Luke 4:16-20 describes him reading from Isaiah in the synagogue) and may have had working knowledge of Greek (necessary for commerce in Galilee, a region with significant Gentile population and trade routes).
Taylor notes that Mark's Gospel preserves more Aramaic words than any other Gospel. Matthew and Luke, when they use Markan material, tend to drop the Aramaic and give only the Greek. The preservation of Aramaic in Mark is therefore a distinctive feature of the earliest Gospel tradition. The Aramaic words function as linguistic fossils: traces of the original language embedded in a Greek text, carrying the sound of the historical Jesus' speech.
The healing in Mark 7:31-37 takes place in the region of the Decapolis (7:31), a league of ten Hellenistic cities east and south of the Sea of Galilee. The Decapolis was predominantly Gentile territory. The population was Greek-speaking, culturally Hellenistic, and included temples to Greek and Roman deities. Jesus' presence in the Decapolis and his healing of a man there are significant for Mark's narrative: the power of Jesus reaches beyond Jewish territory into Gentile regions.
The crowd's response in Mark 7:37 is striking: 'He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.' The language echoes Isaiah 35:5-6: 'Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped... and the tongue of the dumb sing.' Isaiah 35 describes the messianic age, the time when God restores creation. The crowd, likely without intending a theological statement, used the language of messianic prophecy to describe what they had witnessed. The opening of deaf ears was a sign of the age to come. Ephphatha was the word that inaugurated it.
For reflection
Ephphatha. Be opened. One of a handful of words preserved in the actual language Jesus spoke. Mark could have just written the Greek dianoichtheti. He kept the Aramaic sound. The word traveled from Jesus' mouth through Peter's memory through Mark's pen to your eyes. You are closer to the historical voice of Jesus in this word than in almost any other sentence in the New Testament. The word was spoken to a man who could not hear it. He was deaf. Jesus communicated through touch: fingers in the ears, contact with the tongue. Then the word. And the man's ears opened and his tongue loosened and he spoke clearly. What in your life has been shut? What would it mean to hear the same word directed at the closed places, the stopped ears, the bound tongue? Be opened.
Ephphatha: Aramaic ethpathach, 'be opened.' One of only a few Aramaic words preserved in the Greek Gospels. Mark translates for his Roman audience but keeps the original sound. The healing echoes Isaiah 35:5-6, the messianic restoration of creation.
Sources: Taylor, 'Mark'; BDAG